Why splitters are 'all the rage' at Cincinnati Reds spring training
GOODYEAR, Ariz. –– Cincinnati Reds reliever Fernando Cruz has thrown a splitter for his entire career as a pitcher, but no one told him to make it his go-to pitch until the middle of the 2022 season. In the middle of his 15th year of professional baseball, when Cruz was in Triple-A, Reds minor league pitching coordinator Casey Weathers encouraged Cruz to build his entire approach on the mound around that pitch.
Cruz’s splitter was so dominant that it got him to the big leagues, where he made his MLB debut with the Reds at 32 years old.
“I call my splitter my gift from God,” Cruz said. “It truly is.”
Splitter is increasingly popular across MLB
Cruz’s development was at the forefront of a trend that’s spreading across baseball. The splitter is now the trendiest pitch in the game. According to Mike Petriello of MLB.com, more splitters were thrown in the big leagues in 2023 than there were in any other year of the pitch tracking era (since 2008).
The epicenter of this trend is the Reds’ pitching staff. Cruz is known inside of the Reds’ clubhouse as “the king of the splitter,” and Cruz’s splitter draws swings and misses at an elite rate.New Reds starting pitcher Frankie Montas is known for his splitter. “Everyone knows he’s throwing it,” Reds reliever Emilio Pagán said about Montas’ best pitch. “They still don’t do too much with it.”
Pagán has a quality splitter of his own, and new Reds right-handed pitcher Nick Martinez uses a changeup that looks a lot like a splitter.
Why the splitter is increasingly popular
The value of a splitter is pretty self explanatory: The pitch creates a lot of swings and misses, and hitters don’t square the pitch up very often. The rule of thumb is that if a pitcher throws a hard fastball, then they’ve got the ability to throw an effective splitter.
So when Reds starting pitcher Hunter Greene was working on new pitches during the offseason, he added a splitter into the mix.
“If you factor in tremendous whiff and tremendous weak contact, it gives you the total of a really good pitch,” Reds assistant pitching coach Alon Leichman said. “For years, it’s been the best pitch in baseball, but no one throws it. It can open up a ton for Hunter, especially against left-handed hitters. It gives him something that goes down and away or just straight down with less velocity.”
Hunter Greene adding the splitter to his repertoire
For years, Greene tried to turn his changeup into that change of pace pitch. He needed a third pitch designed to keep left-handed hitters off-balanced, but he never showed much confidence in the changeup grip.
Instead of having Greene continue to work on the changeup, they decided to go in a different direction and had him focus on the splitter.
“The pitch has so much depth,” Cruz said. “The hitter can know it’s coming, and they still can’t hit it. It drops so deep into the strike zone. If you have a hard fastball and a splitter that’s 80 to 82 mph, it’s impossible to lay off the splitter with the way it drops down.”
Leichman said that having “the splitter king” on the Reds’ pitching staff is a big advantage as Reds pitchers work on new splitters. Cruz knows the pitch as well as anyone, and he has become an unofficial splitter advisor and expert.
“The first thing I ask is how you grip it,” Cruz said. “The most important thing is how comfortable the ball is in your hand. If you feel uncomfortable with it, it’ll be a nightmare for you. It’ll hurt your elbow. I encourage them to keep the ball out of their palm. You can control it if you have space between your hand and your fingers. When a guy is learning a splitter, I listen a lot, and I add what they need and take away what they don’t.”
Lucas Sims similar to Hunter Greene
This spring, Reds reliever Lucas Sims is going through the same process as Greene. Sims also has an incredible fastball-slider combination, and he was looking for a third pitch that he could feature against left-handed hitters.
Sims’ changeup wasn’t working for him, so he decided to give the splitter a shot.
“The sweeper was all the rage for a little while, and now it’s the splitter,” Sims said. “You’ll find out if it’s a good complement to what you have. For me, I’ve never had a super great feel for a changeup. The splitter gives me another way to attack guys. It can be challenging to learn a new pitch. But with anything, if you put the hard work in, it’s worth it.”
As more and more pitchers throw a splitter around MLB, the pitch will likely get less and less effective. The pitchers who threw splitters in 2023 were the pitchers with the best splitters in baseball. Leichman said pitchers need a lot of confidence in their grip for the pitch to be worth throwing.
Greene and Sims are still figuring out how this pitch could work in their repertoire. Meanwhile, Montas, Martinez and Cruz are providing reminders of how much of an impact that the splitter can make when it’s clicking.
“When you throw a good splitter, it’s super unpredictable,” Reds catcher Luke Maile said. “With how firm the splitter tends to be, it’s a really uncomfortable pitch for hitters to square up. Then when you get a lot of depth with it, usually it’s a great two strike swing and miss pitch. It seems like all the rage around here right now.”
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Cincinnati Reds part of splitter trend in MLB pitching
